A nurse who allegedly arranged to meet a 14-year-old girl he planned to behead with an axe and eat started having fantasies about cannibalism at the age of six, a court has heard.

Dale Bolinger, 57, told police when he was first arrested in February last year for attempting to sexually groom a girl under the age of 16 that he had had fantasies about staff at a kindergarten taking some of the girls to the kitchen to eat them, prosecutor Martin Yale told Canterbury Crown Court.

Reading Bolinger's interview to the court, Mr Yale continued: "By the time I got to 14, I turned into the villain of the piece and I wondered what it would be like to eat a girl."

Bolinger, formerly of Canterbury, Kent, also blamed his "very domineering" mother for his behaviour which he described as "weird" and "very strange", the jury was told.

He told police he had never discussed his fantasies with his wife Rosemary or his son Rick and said he felt ashamed, the court heard.

He told police: "It was less to do with sexual gratification and more to do with anger.

"The people that do it (cannibalism) are seriously deranged, and I may be many things but I am not deranged."

Mr Yale said Bolinger described his cannibalism fantasy as "Jekyll and Hyde" but not something he could fulfil as he would never harm anyone.

Bolinger said in interview: "I think it was more to do with disliking my mother more than hating women."

He told police he had been brought up in a military household because his father was in the US Air Force and he had been suppressed as a child.